Anyhow, Mervyn did not seem especially down on the late Sir George Lambert. The boy described him to us as a great man for hunting and cricket – a very loud and hearty gent from the sound of it, but ‘all right’.
‘Would you like to manage an inn when you’re older?’ Lydia asked Mervyn, and I could see she was taken with the boy, even though he spoke the broad Yorkshire she was forever trying to lead our Harry away from. Mervyn shrugged.
‘Or you might think of the North Eastern Railway,’ I said. ‘The present lad porter at Adenwold’s not up to much, I’ll tell you that.’
Mervyn kept silence. Having laid down his shotgun and given the fire a kick, he was moving towards the river.
‘Lad at t’ station?’ Mervyn said as he walked. ‘… I steer clear.’
‘What’s his name?’ I called after him.
But he didn’t seem to hear.
I indicated by a nod of the head to Lydia that we should follow the boy over to the river.
‘Don’t press him so,’ she said, as we followed in his wake. But I knew she was as keen as me to find out more.
‘What about the station master?’ I asked Mervyn when we were all at the river bank.
‘’Im?’ he said, ‘’im wi’ t’ little men?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘The model soldiers in the booking office.’
Mervyn was drawing what looked like a great rubber bag from out of the river. It had been tethered to the bank like a fisherman’s keep net. He upended it and … well, it was like watching a whale vomiting out dead rabbits, for the rubber bag held half a dozen of them.
‘He’s a weird one all right,’ said Mervyn, flinging away the bag. I looked over to the wife; her face was a picture.
‘Hold on,’ I said to Mervyn. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Keeps the rabbits cold,’ he said.
‘It’s an old mackintosh, I suppose?’ put in the wife.
Mervyn shook his head.
‘Cover for an invalid mattress,’ he said. ‘At least that’s what me mam says.’
‘Where d’you find it?’
‘In t’ wood. Soon as I saw it, I knew it’d come in.’
‘It’s a clever use of it,’ said the wife.
‘It does,’ said Mervyn in a modest sort of way.
He told us that the village carter, a fellow called Hamer, would give him tuppence for each rabbit and then sell them on to the butcher in East Adenwold. There was no butcher in Adenwold itself.
‘Why do you have a fire going, Mervyn?’ asked the wife.
‘In case I pull summat out o’ there,’ he replied, indicating the river.
‘You can take a fish by hand?’
‘At odd times, aye.’
He was stuffing the rabbits into the sacking.
The wife asked, ‘Have you ever been to Scarborough, Mervyn?’
‘I ’ave not.’
‘It’s only an hour’s train ride,’ I said.
‘I don’t ’old wi’ t’ railway.’
‘Why not?’
‘It did for all t’ farms round ’ere.’
Railways were bad for farms. They brought cheap food from abroad.
‘There’d be no lemons here without the railway,’ I said.
‘Well then,’ said Mervyn, ‘I don’t like lemons.’
The wife asked him: ‘Do you never use the railway to get about?’
He shook his head.
‘I just walk over t’ fields.’
‘It sounds a very nice way to travel, I’m sure,’ said the wife.
‘Aye,’ said Mervyn, ‘it is.’
I asked him: ‘Mervyn, who were the villagers beating on the rabbit shoot? When Sir George was shot, I mean.’
‘I’ve no notion,’ he said, eyeing me.
I nodded, saying, ‘Where’s the Hall from here, Mervyn?’
And he stood pointing.
Chapter Twelve
‘And now?’ I asked the wife, as we walked fast through the woods.
The boy’s talk of the murder had flicked her imagination. I could tell that by her silence.
‘We’re not going to call, you know,’ said the wife.
We were not in the habit of leaving cards. We did not have any cards to leave. If I became a solicitor then we would do.
‘We’ll just have a peep at the place,’ I said.
We were moving now along a wider track. There seemed a whole roadway of tracks in the woods, with great junctions under the branches but never any people.
We came to an edge of the trees, and there was the Hall. There were seas of corn to left and right, and pasture directly before it, across which two telegraph wires were carried towards the house by a line of poles that seemed to originate in the woods. A long drive ran through the pasture and ended bang at the front door. It was dead straight but went up and down a good deal, like a long sheet being shaken out. The drive seemed longer than the house required. It was only a moderate-sized mansion, but made up for that in handsomeness.